What Is Our Focus?

This homeschool week has been more of "home" and not "school" for the kids, much to my dismay and disappointment. Where has the week gone? It just flew by so quickly! Already, it's Saturday and I still haven't even planned what we're going to do for next week! :( AND we haven't done most of what I had planned for us to do this week either!

However, I am still thankful for the things God has allowed us to experience this week (including my birthday — by the way, I'm giving away a super inspiring book by Bo Sanchez as my "gift" to you all, you can join the giveaway here if you like!). 

I also thank God that I was able to attend the Manila International Book Fair with friends and fellow homeschool moms/book-lovers from The Learning Basket — I was able to get some great books and inspirational CDs for the kids AND something which we have always wanted to add to our homeschool (since Tim was three, I think!) but couldn't afford to before — a Logico Piccolo set and Fun Thinkers set from Grolier! (We have to pay for it in installments but still, I am quite happy about it! Especially when I see the kids having fun using them!) Thank You, Lord, for providing for our homeschool, as always! :)

Also, I thank God for using Karen of Simply Living for Him to remind me about what is essential in our homeschool — to focus on eternity and on making heaven the ultimate "goal" for our kids (and ourselves, too): 

"Are we focused on making our kids look good, which in turn makes us feel successful? Or are we focusing on their hearts? God knows our hearts and our children’s hearts, and no test score can override that. We must start with their hearts and ours. We must not be caught up in what others think is success. Our goals come from the Lord and what He has called us to do. We work for an audience of One."  

~excerpt from Karen's new ebook..."Called Home."

May you and I remember this always, especially during difficult days! + AMDG +

Equipping Catholic Families.com's Cathletics Craft Kit Giveaway! :)

I love browsing the Internet for useful Catholic sites, especially for our homeschooling, and stumbled upon EquippingCatholicFamilies.com a couple of times before. Eventually, I was able to "meet" Monica McConkey, the mom blogger behind the site, through the Catholic Bloggers Network. :) I am so blessed to be connected to such great and active Catholic moms! :)

Anyway, Monica is currently hosting a great giveaway in honor of going "Back to Catechism Class," since the school year has just started for most people in North America. This giveaway is open WORLDWIDE, and the winners will get to choose a Cathletics Craft Kit (in PDF Download) from the 10 kits available at the Arma Dei Shoppe. More details below:

TEN Craft Kits to Choose from!

FOUR WINNERS WILL BE SELECTED!

Catechism Catcher ~ Catechism Cube ~
Catholic Family Calendar ~

Catholic Lingo Bingo (English or Spanish) ~
Color Me Catholic ~

Journey with Jesus through the Sacraments ~
Journey with Jesus through Confirmation

Lace-Up Missal (English and Spanish) ~
Spiritual Bouquet

The Cathletics craft kits are a fun and interesting way to introduce kids to the basics of the Catholic faith. :) You can read some reviews of the kits here. Monica is allowing winners to print out the kits for their personal use, or even for a whole class to use! :) Awesome, right?

To join the giveaway, please use the Rafflecopter widget below. :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Must-Read for Homeschoolers: Stepping Out of the Grade Level Box

I read an article on Simple Homeschool last week and felt that it MUST be shared and read by other homeschoolers (and even those who are NOT homeschooling their children)! In fact, I think anyone involved in the education of children should read it. :) Here's the link:

Stepping Outside the Grade Level Box

Go ahead and read it and let me know what you think, too! (Just leave a comment below.) :) I've been "struggling" with this for quite some time now — our little boy is "supposed" to be in Kinder 2 (Prep) by Philippine standards (if he were enrolled in a brick-and-mortar school), and his skills are "just right" for his age, according to the preschool teachers who assessed him during our discernment period.

However, since we're enrolling him in Kolbe's K-12 program, it means he'll be in Kindergarten by U.S. standards (they don't have Kinder 2). So does that mean he'll be in a lower grade than he's "supposed" to be in?

We all need to step out of the "boxes" that we've been "placed in" along the course of our lives, doncha think?
(Photo source.)

For a while, I was a bit bothered about this (I have a LOT to unlearn still!) BUT reading the article above just affirmed what I/we have been thinking lately... the need to focus more on building character (for our kids AND ourselves, too!) and letting our kids enjoy being kids. Academics are important, yes, but I don't think God will ask what grade level we finished when we meet Him in heaven — our final destination! :) After all, aren't we "parents for eternal life," as described in the article here? :)

Happy homeschooling, everyone!

A blessed Easter to all! {We're going on a treasure hunt!}

Image source here.

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1 Corinthians 15: 55-57)

Although our Lenten and Holy Week plans and promises did not all go according to what we had hoped, we are nonetheless grateful for how God has brought us to this wonderful day — Easter, when we celebrate Jesus' rising from the dead! :) Thank God we have 50 days to celebrate this beautiful, blessed occasion!

Here's a peek at what the kids will be getting today at our "Easter Treasure Hunt," which we will have during our planned Easter party later at Lolo Mon's house. We'll be having lunch with my dad, my youngest brother and our young "family" members from Timor Leste, who are here for the Youth for Christ International Leaders Conference next weekend:

I reused the plastic Easter eggs we bought last year for our Resurrection Eggs set and placed different "goodies" in each egg — the pink and purple ones are for Rysse and the green and blue ones for Tim. I also bought some Catholic items at our local St. Paul's store.

Can you guess what are inside these eggs? LOL! I think the sticks pretty much give it away! (Lollipops! Tee hee!)

I bought these little books about stories from the Bible (OK, they're kind of NOT related to Easter, but we don't have that many choices here in the Philippines!). Then, I taped Easter eggs to the covers of the books, with each egg containing a one-peso coin. :)

These eggs contain small glow-in-the-dark statues of the Sto. Nino (for Tim) and of Mama Mary (for Rysse).

The last and greatest "treasure" in our hunt will be these VCDs of Saints Stories with holy picture cards of the Resurrected Christ, the Holy Family and St. Therese (for Rysse) and St. Michael (for Tim, they didn't have a St. Timothy card at St. Paul's). The Easter eggs contain a jelly candy each.

I taped the eggs to the kids' favorite snack foods - choc chip cookies for Tim and cheese crackers for Rysse. The eggs contain, again, one-peso coins. :)

We don't have Easter baskets, so I'll just ask the kids to use the bags they got from the CFC Kids for Christ International Kids Village we were blessed to attend last year to gather their Easter treasures. :)

Last-minute additions :) I tried to make a cross out of lollipops, after reading this post about symbolic Easter baskets for Catholic children. How I wish we had Catholic stores that sold Catholic-themed candies and goodies like those featured here! :) 

It's not too late to have a Christ-centered Easter activity for your families, friends! :) Here are some useful links:

Symbolic Easter baskets from Three-Sided Wheel

Catholic Easter basket ideas from Shower of Roses

Easter ideas from Catholicmom.com

While we're at it, let's include the whole family! :) Here are 50 Ways to Celebrate Easter from The Word Among Us website. :) 

P.S. This Easter Sunday, the kids are going on a treasure hunt and we'll be having a simple party. But our only prayer is that they discover the greatest treasure of all, i.e. the Resurrected Christ, alive forevermore! Alleluia! :)

It’s NOT About the Bunny, Honey

Easter Sunday is only days away — it seems like yesterday when we started preparing for Lent. Has it really been almost 40 days since? Gosh, how time flies.

This year, we’re going to try to encourage our kids to get more involved in the Easter Triduum, i.e. the activities in Church starting Holy Thursday up to the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. In previous years, we’d usually skip the Easter Vigil as the children were still quite little then. Although we haven’t decided yet if we’ll do the Vigil this year, we’re not crossing it off our “Easter celebration-to-do list” for now.

What is very definite though, is this: as in years past, we’re going to emphasize again to our kids that Easter is not about the Easter Bunny, or getting Easter eggs, or springtime (which is not really that relevant to us Filipinos anyway).

What we are going to do is remind them that Easter is about the glorious Resurrection of Jesus, just as Christmas is about the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Rather than focus on the joy of receiving Easter eggs from the Easter Bunny, we will celebrate the joy of spending eternity in Heaven in the future — which is why Jesus died and rose again in the first place.

Photo source here.

Don’t get me wrong, though. We’re not going to be complete killjoys and “deprive” our children of chocolate Easter eggs and other treats. We actually are planning to go on an “Easter treat hunt” in our teeny-tiny apartment on Easter Sunday (or, on second thought, maybe we’ll have it in my parents’ place, tee hee!).

Aside from Easter eggs and other treats, we’ll hide faith-themed little things, like small Christian books from our favorite Booksale branch, stickers of Jesus, Mary and other saints (if these are available), and other cute, novelty items around for the kids to “hunt.” If our budget permits, we may even get them Easter presents, similar to the Christmas parents most kids usually receive.

Photo source here.

Prior to our planned Easter Sunday mini-festivities, we’re planning to attend the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday (today!) and, hopefully, do our own simple washing of the feet ceremony as a family.  We also plan to do the Visita Iglesia Online, a service provided by the CBCP.

On Good Friday, we hope to be able to do the Stations of the Cross and join the Good Friday service and Veneration of the Cross in our parish. I’ll also ask the kids to do one or two cross crafts (taking ideas either from Catholic Icing.com, American Catholic mommy blogger Lacy's fab blog, or The Learning Basket.com, a blog set up by fellow Catholic Filipino homeschool mom, Mariel).

On Holy Saturday, we’ll try to keep our activities as solemn as possible and prepare for the Easter Sunday celebration we have planned.

It’s my deepest hope and prayer that by doing this, our children will not only learn that Easter isn’t about the bunny, but, more importantly, treasure and enjoy living out our faith. I think it’s wonderful that the Church gives us 50 days to celebrate Easter, not just one Sunday! Here’s to more fun, faith-filled activities in our home!

And here’s to a blessed, happy Easter to you all, dear readers! Enjoy your much-deserved break with your loved ones!

Little Therese and her Mother Goose "obsession" {AND "How to introduce Jesus to 2 to 3 Year Olds}

Last week, I stumbled upon this video on YouTube while looking for nursery rhyme videos to occupy our not-quite-three-year-old Therese (aka Rysse {pronounced "Reese," like the chocolate "Reese's Pieces" or the actress, Reese Witherspoon) while I was writing an article.

Little did I know that I would be creating a "Mother Goose `monster,'" i.e. that Rysse would become half-obsessed with Little Bo Peep and the other Mother Goose Club videos! It's come to the point that she asks for Little Bo Peep in the morning, as soon as she wakes up, and at night, when she sees my office-issued Mac (which she cutely calls "your printer," haha!). She even cries sometimes, "I miss Little Bo Peep!"

On the brighter side of things, I'm hoping she'll learn to love rhymes, finger plays and such through the videos, which I try as much as I can to watch with her. :-) However, I've been trying to tell both Rysse and her older brother, Tim, that it's Lent, and we / they should try making small "sacrifices" for Jesus - including less TV/computer time (oh yes, I'm one of those moms! Sorry!). OK, I don't know about you guys, but it.has.been.DIFFICULT. How does one explain to a 2+ year old about Jesus' ultimate sacrifice of love in terms she'll be able to understand?! *Sighs* Enlighten me, please.

Anyway, to answer my own question, I think I'll begin by telling her that Little Bo Peep and her Mother Goose friends are all nice and stuff like that, but Jesus is the most fun, most awesome and most musical Person alive! :-)

By God's grace, I discovered this great site earlier while doing research for Mustard, the magazine that I'm in charge of, called Crusader Castle. Looks like a great place to start introducing the Faith to Rysse (and reinforcing it, for Tim!) :-)

Also, I found some informative articles about introducing or explaining Jesus to young children below. If you're in the same "boat" as I am in now, you may want to check them out as well:

Teaching Toddlers: How Do We Catechize the Little Ones? (Scroll down to see the comments, which are all very informative!)

How to Explain Jesus to a 3-Year-Old

How to Explain Jesus to Your Toddlers

How to Teach Little Children About God

"Jesus Loves Me" Toddler Lessons

And last, but not the least, I think I should "review" this article I wrote for Smart Parenting's website over a year ago:

Praise and Play - How to Teach Your Kids About God

Let's pray for one another, shall we? :-) Let's pray for our little ones, too, that they may come to know the height, breadth, width and depth of God's amazing, astounding love for them! :-)

Those "Awww" Moments, The Search for A Progressive School and A Late Start to Our Lenten Journey

I've been a very bad Teacher Mama this past week.. To be perfectly honest, I feel like I've been one these past few months! We've been doing more of unschooling, or as others prefer to call it, relaxed homeschooling, life-learning, interest-led learning or child-led learning. and so on. (Although many, many days, I've been guilty of letting the kids watch TV/DVDs and play educational computer games waaayy too much! Please forgive me, Lord!)

Despite our erratic daily routine and "instant-without-Mama-having-prepared-well-in-advance-so-let's-just-wing-it-today" lessons, my changing-though-thank-God-there's-a-level-of-regularity work schedule, I'm still thankful to God for the "Awww" moments He blesses me with, like when I was hugging Tim this morning after he woke up, and asked him, "Will you still let me hug you when you're all grown up?"

Tim: "Yes!"

Me: "Even if you're already married?"

Tim: "Yes!"

Me: "How about if you become a priest?"

Tim: "I'm not going to be a priest!"

Me: "Why not?"

Tim: "I don't want to. But I'll still serve God."

Me: (silently: "Awwwww...")

Tim: "I'm going to be a ninja!"

Me: "How will you serve God when you're a ninja?"

Tim: "You know. I just will."

Hahaha! How do I answer that one?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other news, yes, you read the title of this post right.. because of my "fear" that I'm not teaching Tim "enough" and that he is "missing out," I am/we are currently scouting progressive preschools for next school year. Though I still have this nagging feeling that we're still being called to homeschool, the "segurista" (Umm.. what's the English word for that? Someone who always wants to be sure of things?! haha!) in me just wants to know her options.

Happy Feast Day St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael!

I started off this day with a reflection about St. Joseph and Mama Mary, which was inspired by some videos I watched with the kids. What a fitting way to start the day!

The Three Archangels with Tobias by Francesco Botticini from

friendsofart.net

Today, on Michaelmas, besides celebrating the feast day of St. Michael the Archangel, along with Saints Gabriel and Raphael, the other archangels, in various ways, let's pray for our families, and all families everywhere. Let us especially pray for protection from the evil one and for stronger families built on the ROCK of Christ.

Here are some prayers to get us started from a website about St. Michael:

Raising smart savers is a Catholic thing to do!

Ever since hubby and I attended free financial education lectures last year, we have been more conscious about how we spend and invest our money. We have also been trying to teach our kids about the value of money, even if they are JUST almost 5 and 2 years old respectively. We believe that raising our kids to be good Catholics also means raising them to be good stewards of the resources and blessings we receive from the Lord. This includes being "smart savers."

Photo from familybudgetideas.com